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Health officials said a streamlined and uniform blood-collection and testing system will be in place in Shanghai by 2010. The system will enable blood-collection centers in rural areas to send samples to a central laboratory, where they will be screened for AIDS, hepatitis and other infectious diseases. Each unit of donated blood will be labeled and tracked using a bar-code system. The system will improve the accuracy of blood tests, an official at the Shanghai Blood Center said.

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Haemonetics, a provider of blood-collection devices and related systems, has entered into a $60 million deal to acquire Global Med Technologies, a blood-collection software firm. "Global Med's software offerings are a strategic complement to our existing products and will allow us to offer customers an end-to-end software solution for blood management, from donor recruitment to the patient transfusion," Haemonetics CEO Brian Concannon said.

Ten new ambulatory electronic health record products were certified under the 2008 criteria set by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. Among these products are MEDENT, eClinicalWorks and EpiCare Ambulatory EMR. The new criteria puts more focus on the interoperability of EHR products.

John Kaldor, a professor with the National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research, supported the policy against MSM blood donations in an ongoing case in the Anti-Discrimination Tribunal in Tasmania, Australia. An activist, however, criticized Kaldor for referencing "a highly unrepresentative study."

Scientists were able to trace the cause of three dengue virus cases in Singapore last year to dengue-infected blood from a repeat donor, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Singapore doesn't screen donated blood for dengue because existing tests are too slow and faster tests haven't yet been approved for use by the U.S. FDA, Singapore's Health Sciences Authority said.

The humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders said to dramatically reduce deaths from malaria, anti-malaria treatments should be given to patients for free. The group said the success of its programs in Mali, Chad and Sierra Leone provides evidence that this approach could make a difference. New treatments for malaria will only succeed if their costs are not passed on to patients, especially those in remote areas, the group said.